Throwback Thursday #17: That Great American Murder BalladThe Historical Legend of Staggolee Who Shot Ol' Billy Down

2016 marks the 120th anniversary of the trial that resulted from America’s most famous murder. No, I am not speaking of the murder of John Wesley Hardin, nor the trial of H.H. Holmes, nor even San Francisco’s notorious Mission District murders. No, I am speaking of a small, nearly trivial murder that happened in December of 1895, whose reverberations are still felt today in our culture: the murder of William Lyons by “Stag” Lee Shelton. It’s also the 104th anniversary of Shelton’s death (he passed away from tuberculosis in March of 1912).

It was nearly trivial because of its quintessential American character, which is to say that two friends got drunk, got stupid, whereupon one got dead. In the information age we expect to read this sort of thing daily. But this one humble murder grew to become the Great American murder ballad, variously Staggolee, Staggerlee, Stack-o-Lee, Stack O’Lee, and many more.

Murder ballads are a traditional part of western culture, and most of the murder ballads of our popular culture are ancient. For example, Knoxville Girl, which is one of the few that has a recorded history nearly as illustrious (as everyone from country singers to punk rockers has recorded it) as the subject of this piece is really just an ancient English ballad, Oxford Girl, reset to Tennessee (except for the GG Allin version, which presumably takes place in New England). But Staggolee is uniquely American, and unlike many other uniquely American murder ballads, has been recorded hundreds of times.

But there’s something else that makes it unique: it’s that, in many ways, the song itself is a reflection of American culture, for artists have continuously added to the story, recreating it, making it something new. The murder was first made into a poem, and the first known reference to a song dates all the way back to an 1897 mention in a Kansas City newspaper. Lyrics for it were first registered for copyright in the pre-WWI era. All while Stag Lee Shelton was still alive.

If I ever get my hands on you, Nick Cave…

The earliest versions were about Staggolee, the big scary black man. The refrain is rather explicit about this with its, “That bad man, Staggolee!” (listen to the Mississippi John Hurt’s Stack O’Lee Blues for an example of this). This version was popularized across the South by traveling bluesmen and minstrel shows. But over the years the song changed. You can see this just in the work of Mississippi John Hurt, who by the 1960s had turned it into the Tale of Stagger Lee: the Black John Wesley Hardin.

But it wouldn’t stop there. Pacific Gas & Electric went whole hog on the black superman angle, using one of the (many) traditional endings where Staggolee ends the song by descending into hell after his execution to take command of the place from the devil himself. For the socially aware band hell and the devil are something of a metaphor for the American incarceration system (it was a recurring theme for them; see Death Row #172 for another example of their criticism of the justice system). By the time the Grateful Dead got to it they turned the song into a proto-libertarian and proto-feminist anthem, where the main character is Delilah DeLyons, wife of Stagger Lee’s victim. The song starts with the meaningless murder and Delilah DeLyons’ outrage that the local sheriff prefers to roust local prostitutes to arresting murderers like Stagger Lee. And when the sheriff pronounces himself too afraid to do the hard work of enforcing justice, Delilah DeLyons tells him that if he won’t bring in the murderer, she’ll just have to do it herself.

The song has been recast as ska-punk by the Clash (covering a ska version of the song in the process), heavy blues/soul rock by The Black Keys, folk pop by Josh Ritter, homoerotic post-punk murder ballad by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and hardcore punk metal by Modern Life is War. Beyond that it was a #1 pop hit in the 50s, spawning covers from everyone, from New Orleans blues legend Doctor John, to country star Jerry Reed, to the Fabulous Thunderbirds. It’s also given birth to a legion of traditional Americana versions by everyone from Beck to Chris Whitley. It’s so ingrained in American culture that the godfather of Christian rock, Larry Norman, borrowed the first line of the popular version of the song (I was standin’ on the corner, when I heard my bulldog bark) for his song Nightmare #97.

That bad bad man…

There is an important point beyond the sheer diversity of the interpretations, and it’s relevant to a current poison that’s killing American culture. American millennials with their gospel of microaggressions would identify much of this song’s journey through Americana as cultural appropriation. But there is no such thing. There’s just culture. Cultures grow when people exchange ideas and bring something new to the stories they find (as, for example, I like to think that my forthcoming Sherlock Holmes novel, or the graphic novel The Amateurs bring something new to the stories they incorporate), and leave us all richer in their wake.

Staggolee/Staggerlee/Stack-o-Lee/Stack O’Lee is one of the great shining examples of this. From a real-life murder that might have qualified the participants for Darwin Awards had they lived a century later sprang a litany of poems and songs that sometimes reinforced negative stereotypes about African American culture, but in other variants celebrated that culture, pronounced defiance against the legal authorities, celebrated a libertarian version of justice, or just entertained us with stories. That’s what culture is: not about people keeping ideas in paddocks where they never venture out and are never shared, but a celebration of what is, and how we can bring something new to what existed before us.

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The Oscar Wilde of the information age and the last of the New England gentlemen. Unless, god forbid, he spawns. A Catholic anarchist & writer currently managing Satan's run for president (The Official Lesser Evil of 2016™). If you like his work, please consider buying one of his very funny tee shirts. See hisShopify store for updates.

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